Northern Exposure: New Square Enix/DONTNOD Game, 'Life Is Strange' Announced

In video games as in life, if you want quirky you can do a lot worse than the Pacific Northwest. Fullbright's (né The Fullbright Company)'s Gone Home set its ghost-hunting action* in Oregon. Deadly Premonition's Greenvale was located in Washington state, in conscious homage to Twin Peaks.

Variable State's upcoming Virginiais not set in Washington state, but is, like Deadly Premonition, influencedby the Snohomish-filmed Twin Peaks. And now DONTNOD Entertainment has announced that its next game, published by Square Enix, will be a "narrative-driven adventure" located in the fictitious town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon and called Life is Strange.

Paris-based DONTNOD is known for Remember Me, the 2013 third-person actioner somewhere between The Nomad Soul and We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Nilin, the game's hero, had to recover her lost memories by completing challenges often involving the game's unique mechanic of "memory remixing" - Nilin could go into certain targets' memories and move or remove elements, causing them to remember scenes differently and behave differently in the present.

While praised for this inventive mechanic, the game itself could be described as a mixed success, with criticism of its combat in particular emerging. The game had a fairly fraught development process, beginning its life as a PlayStation 3 exclusive called Adrift, set in a sunken world before it was cancelled and then revived as a multiplatform release published by CapCom with a wholly different plot and core mechanic.

Be kind, rewind

Life is Strange, it was announced Monday, will also be based around an offbeat mechanic, although one games have explored many times before: the protagonist, Max Caulfield, is able to rewind time. Returning after five years to her home town, Max reunites with her childhood friend Chloe, and, as seems to happen a lot in the fictional Northwest, explores the disappearance of another young woman.

This looks like an interesting tie-up between publisher and developer. Square Enix's struggles in the Western markets, which led to CEO Yoichi Wada's resignation in June 2013, have been well-documented, but, outside the Final Fantasy series, its most notable success has been Tomb Raider; the Crystal Dynamics reboot, with Rhianna Pratchett on writing duties, received wide critical acclaim and sold strongly and steadily, even if it did not meet SquEnix's initial, aspirational sales targets. Like Tomb Raider, Life is Strange is based around a female lead - still a relatively rare market property. DONTNOD, meanwhile, still have something to prove - the reception to Remember Me was warm, but highlighted problems potentially ascribable to its long and problematic development. With a clean slate, the French studio has an opportunity to make its case to be considered a serious producer of inventive A-games.

Square Enix is majoring on the "hand-drawn" textures of Life is Strange. In a sense, all textures are created by hand, or none are, but you can see what they're going for.

The decision to release the game as episodic content, in the style of Telltale Games' The Walking Dead and Fables tie-ins, is also interesting. One criticism of those series is that, although the choices made by the player often have considerable emotional weight, their impact on the narrative is limited.

Given that time travel often leads to ramifying plot complications and holes (Trenzalore, anyone?), how DONTNOD approaches this structure will be of interest to many looking at the same model. Will it simply be a way to explore different narrative options, or will it open and close new narrative paths?

There will be more to see at GamesCom later in the week, but for now chalk up another one to the creative pull of small towns, big trees and damn fine cherry pies.

Life Is Strange will be released by Square Enix for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Xbox 360.

I am currently a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine in the UK, having written for Wired UK since its launch in 2009, and speak regularly on the impact of developing technologies on consumer behaviors at Wired Consulting events and elsewhere.